Dave Snyder Talks Outsourcing SEO

Ah, SEO. The enigma we have all come to know and love– or hate depending on who you talk to. One question affiliates want to know is, “Should I outsource my SEO or do it all in-house?” Good question.

We caught up with world-renowned link marketer and SteelCast CEO Dave Snyder to get some information about outsourcing SEO.

Hey Dave, thanks for answering these outsourcing SEO questions for our readers. First and foremost, is it better to outsource SEO or do it in-house?

First, let me state that I am no longer actively offering consulting services so I can answer this a lot more honestly than I could in the past.

It’s a loaded question.

Do you have anyone skilled in SEO? If the answer is anything less then yes, than automatically revert to outsourcing. The days where you could know a little bit and do a lot of good are gone. However the days where knowing a little bit can get you into big trouble are here.

I think the SEO process lends itself to multiple levels:

Auditing

Strategy

Implementation

I think #3 is something that can be done inhouse, and this is much of the ongoing cost. If you are serious about SEO getting someone to help with #1 and #2 is important.

There’s a ton of “agencies” that offer link building services. What are your thoughts on outsourcing link building?

So my thoughts are that linkbuilding as we have known it is something that should be handled with care. The days where you could go an point a ton of links at a page with specific anchor text and rank with no repercussions are dead. I thought the gaming space was free and clear from this, but the Penguin update proved this to be wrong.

My advice:

If you are an existing site, stop what you are doing, take an audit of what others in your space are doing, and how it looks similar or different than you. If you find yourself being more aggressive, remove some of those links.

Look to replace your current linkbuilding, with high quality content marketing. The difference is huge, but can be summarized in the term quality over quantity.

If you are brand new, look to build a brand and leverage a mix of content and content marketing. If you really don’t think this can work I will show you examples if you email me.

How do I know I can trust one of these outsourced SEO companies?

You really need to get references. I wouldn’t work with anyone that I don’t get references for, and case studies to support those references.